The Democratic Platform Completely Ignores the Second Amendment

While this year’s Republican platform makes only a passing reference to Second Amendment rights, the one approved at the Democratic National Convention this week makes no mention of them. It does, however, include eight references to “gun safety” and a section that touts the Biden administration’s accomplishments in that area while laying out an agenda of additional gun restrictions.

This approach to the issue is similar to what Democrats took in 2016, when their platform mentioned “the rights of responsible gun owners” but didn’t elucidate the basis for those rights, and in 2020, when the platform didn’t even go that far. The 2016 platform devoted one paragraph to gun control, which has grown from two paragraphs in 2020 to five now. Neither of the two most recent platforms makes any mention of respecting gun rights.

In 2000, Democrats promised to “respect the rights of hunters, sportsmen, and lawful firearm owners.” Four years later, after gun issues, including Al Gore’s support for an “assault weapons” ban, were widely blamed for helping elect George W. Bush, Democrats promised to “protect the Second Amendment right of Americans to own firearms.” The 2008 and 2012 platforms included similar language, both explicitly invoking the Second Amendment, which disappeared in the 2016 platform and seems to be a distant memory for Democrats.

Whatever one might think of former President Donald Trump’s evolution on gun rights, which seems to reflect more political spending than real convictions, he at least understands the importance of paying lip service to defending the Second Amendment. The current Democratic Party, by contrast, is intent on promoting gun control without recognizing any constitutional limits on that control.

“When I’m back in the Oval Office, no one will lay a hand on your guns,” Trump promised at the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) Great American Outdoor Show Presidential Forum in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on February 9. “That’s not going to happen… Even as they turn America into a crime-ridden, gang-infested, terror-filled dumping ground, Joe Biden and his thugs will do everything in their power to take away your guns and take away your God-given right to self-defense. In my four years in office, nothing happened. And I was under a lot of pressure on guns. We didn’t do anything. We didn’t back down.”

In their platform, Democrats cite these last four sentences, which they consider damning: “While he ‘did nothing,’ gun violence skyrocketed: Trump oversaw the largest annual increase in murders in history, including a 35 percent increase in gun-related killings. He refused to limit the use of high-capacity magazines after a Las Vegas shooter used a dozen 100-round magazines to kill 58 people. And, faced with horrific gun violence, he told families to ‘get over it.’”

Both interpretations deserve correction. While Trump claims to have “done nothing” on gun control, that’s not true. After the Las Vegas massacre in October 2017, he called for an administrative ban on bump stocks, which the Supreme Court struck down last June, ruling that it exceeded the statutory authority of gun regulators. In a February 2018 meeting with lawmakers, Trump spoke favorably of requiring background checks on all gun transfers, raising the minimum age for purchasing long guns, preemptively confiscating guns from people who might be dangerous, and even banning so-called assault weapons, lest he end up in a dangerous situation. visible pleasure by Senator Dianne Feinstein (D–California).

On other occasions, Trump has expressed support for bans on gun ownership by people on the no-fly list and for “red flag” laws, which allow court orders to suspend the Second Amendment rights of people deemed dangerous to themselves or others. He has gone so far as to say that police should “seize the gun first” and “follow due process” when they believe someone is dangerous. Still, it’s true that Trump’s comments haven’t led to any real policy changes, beyond banning bump stocks.

Trump’s response to the Las Vegas shootings shows that the Democrats’ image of him as unfazed by such horrific crimes is blatantly inaccurate. Their use of the “get over it” quote is highly misleading. Here’s what Trump actually said after a school shooting in Iowa in January: “It’s just horrible, so surprising to see this here. But we have to get over it, we have to move forward.”

It’s also hard to take seriously the idea that gun control is responsible for the 2020 spike in homicides. There’s no change in gun policy that could explain the spike. Nor has there been a change in gun policy that could explain the recent decline in homicides—a development Democrats are quick to point out when Trump tries to blame the Biden administration for a supposedly “skyrocketing” murder rate. And their implicit thesis that more guns means more violence is contradicted by crime trends since the early 1990s: From 1993 to 2013, when the homicide rate fell by more than half, the estimated number of guns owned by Americans increased by about the same percentage.

In contrast to Trump’s record of doing (almost) “nothing” to restrict guns, Democrats are boasting about President Joe Biden’s support for the bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA) of 2022, “the first significant federal gun safety legislation in nearly 30 years.” The BSCA, they say, “includes the first-ever federal gun trafficking and nominee purchase law.” The platform fails to mention that the BSCA defines “gun trafficking” broadly enough to include “prohibited persons” who obtain firearms, creating a new charge, punishable by up to 15 years in prison, for people like Biden’s own son, who was convicted in June of buying a gun while using crack cocaine.

Among those banned are millions of Americans with no history of violence, whom Congress has arbitrarily declared criminals if they dare to exercise their Second Amendment rights. These categories include users of marijuana and other illegal drugs, anyone who has ever been subjected to involuntary psychiatric treatment because they were judged suicidal, and anyone who has ever been convicted of a crime punishable by more than a year in prison, whether or not it involved violence of any kind.

Before the law Democrats proudly cite, these people already faced three counts of gun purchase; the BSCA’s “gun trafficking” provision added another. The same law also increased the maximum sentence for illegal gun possession from 10 to 15 years. Biden clearly thought people like his son were getting away with it too well.

In recent years, these sweeping gun bans have been the subject of numerous constitutional challenges, some of which have been successful. But since Democrats don’t even acknowledge the existence of the Second Amendment, they are happy to double down on their efforts to implement this unjust and irrational policy. And they promise to do the same, saying they will “institute universal background checks” to enforce these restrictions.

The Democratic platform also includes a new federal ban on “assault weapons,” another illogical and constitutionally dubious policy that even Biden has admitted has no effect on the lethality of weapons available to would-be murderers. They want to “end the use of firearms.”
Democrats are also promising a national “red flag law,” which would worsen the Second Amendment and due process violations we’ve already seen in states that have adopted this policy.

While Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign website doesn’t contain specific policy positions, the platform confirms what we already knew: She doesn’t see the Constitution as an obstacle to her gun control agenda. In 2019, when Harris was running against Biden for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, she promised to impose new gun policies—including “universal background checks, an assault weapons ban, and repealing the Corporate Firearms Manufacturers and Dealers Immunity Bill”—by executive order if Congress didn’t approve such legislation within her first 100 days in office.

It was too much, even for Biden. “There’s no constitutional authority to issue an executive order like that when they say, ‘I’m going to eliminate assault weapons,’” he said. “You can’t do it by executive order, any more than Trump can do things when he says he can do it by executive order.” Asked about the comment during a Democratic presidential debate, Harris laughed and replied blithely: “Well, I mean, I would just say, hey, Joe, instead of saying, ‘No, we can’t,’ let’s say, ‘Yes, we can.’”

Biden objected: “Let’s be constitutional,” he said. “We have a Constitution.” He also suggested Harris “check with the constitutional scholars” to see if her plan was consistent with the separation of powers.

While Biden aspired to “be constitutional,” in other words, Harris responded, in essence: “Constitution, schmonstitution. Why should that stand in the way of my agenda?”

As president, Biden appears to have overcome his reservations about unilateral gun control. The Democratic platform, for example, praises him for trying to ban homemade guns without congressional authorization, another policy that has been challenged in court.

In any case, the disagreement between Biden and Harris in 2019 was over whether the president had the constitutional authority to unilaterally ban “assault weapons.” The Second Amendment had nothing to do with it, even in retrospect. That’s what drove Biden’s decision on gun control, and we can expect the same (or worse) from Harris.